I’ve narrowed it down to five

Dave Pell helps me understand why it is taking months, may take years, for me to replace my old phone and PDA.

Stop. Do not send me your pick for best note-taking app.

I can’t take any more options. I’ve already spent weeks comparing sets of features I’m pretty sure I’ll never need. I tried out at least fifteen applications on my desktop, phone and on the web. I was completely overwhelmed by choices. The process began to take over my life. I spent hours in front of my laptop, I’d demo various features for my wife and kids…

I thought I could pick one web-based tool for notes and diaries. Right now my bookmarks bar has an entire folder of tools, each for its own special purpose.

Reading list

‘Tis Poetry Month once again, and Patrick Cooper points to Jay Parini’s list of ten American poems then “have left the deepest mark on US literature – and me.” Robert Lowell is more or less unknown to me, and Parini’s selection, “Memories of West Street and Lepke,” reminds me pleasantly of Marianne Moore. I haven’t read much Whitman for a long while—time to rectify that.

Annotation

Because there is no end, happy or otherwise. Nothing is fixed, nothing is solved. The facts, such as they are, finally spin off into the void of things missing, the inconclusiveness of conclusion. Mystery finally claims us. Who are we? Where do we go? The ambiguity may be dissatisfying, even irritating, but this is a love story. There is no tidiness. Blame it on the human heart. One way or another, it seems, we all perform vanishing tricks, effacing history, locking up our lives and slipping day by day into the graying shadows. Our whereabouts are uncertain. All secrets lead to the dark, and beyond the dark there is only maybe.

—Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods, p. 304, n. 136

Silver Line progress report: 17/a

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has submitted a list of dull, wordy station names to the Metro board. These names are for the new Silver Line stations that lie within the County, so the Loudoun stations aren’t on the list. Emphasis mine in the quote:

The WMATA policy indicates that station names should involve the following:

  • Identify the station location by geographical features or centers of activity;
  • Geographical names may be derived from those of cities, communities; neighborhoods, squares, circles, Metro-intersecting streets, etc.;
  • Centers of activity may be derived from schools, stadiums, parks, hospitals, airports, depots, shopping centers, galleries, museums, government installations, etc.;
  • Names should be distinctive and evoke imagery; and
  • Names should be relatively brief and be no longer than 19 characters.

Most of the entries on the Board’s approved list fail to meet the fourth and fifth criteria above:

  • Tysons-McLean
  • Tysons I&II
  • Tysons Central
  • Tysons-Spring Hill Road
  • Reston-Wiehle Avenue
  • Reston Town Center
  • Herndon-Reston West
  • Herndon-Dulles East

Here are the names I would use. Several of them are the placeholder names that have been on planning maps for years—eminently useful because they told you where the station was located with no hyphenated hoohah.

  • Scott’s Run (or Scotts Run, if you want to be postal about it)
  • Tysons Center
  • Freedom Hill (sorry, there can be only one center)
  • Spring Hill Road
  • Wiehle Avenue
  • Reston Town Center
  • Monroe Street
  • Sully Road (I’m not so sure about this one, since it seems to lie between Sully and Centerville Roads)

I would also consider “Dulles Gateway” for Route 28, if some property developer hasn’t already snapped up that name.

Or maybe we should go the naming-rights-for-sale route and call the Tysons-McLean station “Tysons-Capital One” and be done with it. Until Capital One goes bust, of course.

Piney Branch headwaters

glassyOur last field trip for Land Use Planning was a squlchy walk through the headwaters of Piney Branch in southwestern Montgomery County, as we looked at stormwater management structures there. Piney Branch is within one of several Special Protection Areas in the County. About ten years ago, Human Genome Sciences built a campus on land near Travillah and Darnestown Roads under conditions meant to ensure best practices for stormwater quality and quantity control.

three poolsforebay gunkCurrent thinking encourages more, smaller retention chambers, like this series of three. In the image at left, you’re looking at the last chamber, where (behind you) the outfall structures drain into the stream. The two upstream chambers are the depressions you see in the middle ground, this side of the road and lie of bare trees. In the image at right, you’re looking in the opposite direction, at the first of the chambers. The dark gunk is sediment and petroleum washed from the various impervious surfaces of the campus and settled into the sand at the bottom of the chamber. The white PVC tubes at upper right at test wells for checking groundwater levels.

chambers and wallA little farther along Shady Grove Road Extended is this chamber. The primary outfall is partially obscured by the dead Typha stalks, and it carries water to the stream in a small pipe (about 10 cm diameter). In the event of a major rain event, the large outfall structure at center left carries water away in a big pipe (30 cm or more). Most of these large outfall structures are notched so that a medium-sized inundation can be slowed down by the chamber. Also notice the retaining wall at right, which is holding up the graded fill so that offices and parking could be built on level ground, out of frame at right. The retaining wall is already showing some cracks and streaks.

ducks like itOld-fashioned stormwater practices depended on in-stream dams that formed artificial ponds, like this one in a different development, part of the Universities at Shady Grove. At any rate, the three Ring-necked Ducks (Aythya collaris) that we saw were enjoying the water.

scrubbedDespite management efforts, Piney Branch is not in the prime of health. Scouring of the banks is apparent in the image.